In this chapter we first develop a semantic-conceptual analysis of the English word security, a key word in international geopolitical discourse, contrasting it with English safety. We then investigate the meanings of comparable words in German and in Chinese, i.e. Sicherheit and ānquán, respectively. Our method of lexical semantic description is the NSM (natural semantic metalanguage) approach, which is based on paraphrase into simple, cross-translatable words. The analysis is corpus-assisted. The results show that the meaning differences between “safety/security concepts” across languages are greater than many people would expect, and, furthermore, that these differences are culture-related. The implications for international “security discourse” are briefly explored.